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CHAPTERELEVEN
Rosalie tried to keep from fidgeting in her seat, but she didn’t succeed. She’d been out to the farm before, but only once. Her nerves had fired at her as loudly then as they were now, and she swallowed one more time.
“You okay?” Lee asked, his arm hanging loosely over the top of the steering wheel. “You seem to have ants in your pants.”
Rosalie looked at him, her mind slowing. “First, I’m not eight.”
Lee only kept grinning at her, so she shook her head. “Second, yes, I’m nervous. You’re taking me to your brother’s wedding. I’m going to have to meet your whole family, and they’re going to judge me from the first look.”
She glanced down at her dress, which was a lovely eggplant color. If Shayla hadn’t chosen this exact shade for her wedding, Rosalie wouldn’t know how to connect to the woman. Gems made the dress sparkle, and it might have been more of an evening wedding gown than an afternoon-on-the-farm-wedding dress.
Rosalie had decided she didn’t care, but that was when she’d been standing in her bathroom in the dress. It hugged her curves and she had the perfect pair of black heels to wear with it. Now, she worried that her shoes would sink in the dirt out here, and that everyone would be in denim and sundresses, leaving her to stick out like the city slicker she was.
“Relax,” Lee said, switching hands so he could reach across the distance between them and lace his fingers between hers. “They’re not going to be judging you. They’re all going to be looking at me.”
“You?” Rosalie watched him, but the man was very good at shuttering off certain emotions. He claimed to be terrible at hiding how he felt, but Rosalie thought he harbored quite the talent for it. Sure, she could always tell if he was upset or angry, but other than that, the man existed behind a shroud. “Why?”
“I don’t want to say,” he said darkly, looking out his side window. He eased up off the accelerator in the next moment, and his trusty, rusty truck started to slow. He’d told her via text this week that he should probably buy a new one, but he liked this one so much.
When they’d gone out last night, she’d learned that he’d be picking up his son on the way back to the farm, and he’d asked about meeting Autumn. Rosalie had met him a few months ago, but they hadn’t really started seeing one another until a week ago. Sort of.
She hadn’t known what to say, and Lee had told her that she could introduce her daughter whenever she was ready. He wasn’t going to push her on it.
“You can tell me,” Rosalie said as he made the turn from asphalt highway to the dirt road that led down a gentle hill and then branched to the left and right. A white farmhouse could be seen on Rosalie’s left, and she’d gone there to find out where Lee lived the day she’d delivered the video game he’d ordered.
She’d seen the cowboy cabins along the lane to the right, then another one back in a clearing slightly north of another T-junction. She hadn’t gone south, so she didn’t know what sat that way, because Lee’s cabin went north and around another couple of bends. He lived out by no one, and she wondered if he liked that or not.
When she’d come to deliver the game, the farm looked like a farm. Grasses and dirt roads, serene cabins, big, blue, Texas sky.
Today, everything had been transformed into wedding central. On the left-hand side of the road sat four huge tents with pink, green, and purple streamers in the corners. Greenery hung from every pole Rosalie could see as Lee bumped the truck along. He hadn’t answered her question, and she’d forgotten it as she took in the grandeur this farm had dressed itself with.
A cowboy stood at the fork in the road and waved at Lee to turn left, toward the farmhouse. He came to a stop and rolled down his window. “I’m headed to my cabin,” he said.
“Of course, Mister Cooper,” the man said.
“Milking on schedule?” Lee asked, nothank youin sight.
“Johnny and Gary are on it.”
“Thanks, Mack.” Lee eased away from the cowboy and went right. Rosalie wanted to turn and crane her neck to see the rest of the festivities, but she didn’t. Questions streamed through her mind, but she didn’t dare let any of them come out of her mouth.
She hadn’t met anyone in his family, and that cowboy’s name was Mack. She knew his brothers were Travis—the one getting married—and Will. Mama and Daddy were Chrissy and Wayne. He had bookend sisters: Clarissa who lived here on the farm with her husband, Spencer, and Cherry, who lived in San Antonio and worked at a college.
Ford was the only child in the bunch for the time being, but Clarissa was pregnant and due in six more months. Rosalie ran her hands along her curls, wishing someone had invented some sort of high-stress deodorant, because hers was failing, and she wasn’t even out of the air-conditioned truck yet.
“You’re makin’ me nervous,” he said.
“You aren’t nervous?” she asked, wondering how to delicately ask how much money he had. This farm screamed wealth, and as he rounded the last bend in the road and his cabin came into view, Rosalie saw all the dollar bills.
The two-story cabin boasted all wood with a reddish-gold tone and pristine windows. Rock made up the exterior on the fireplace, and the porch had obviously been stained recently for how brightly it shone.
A child stood from the top step of the porch, and Rosalie’s heart ricocheted into her brain and back to the bottom of her stomach. “That’s Ford,” she whispered.
“Yep,” Lee said. “That’s my son.” He brought the truck to a stop, and Rosalie suddenly felt frozen in her seat. He glanced over to her. “Rose.”
Her nickname thawed her, and she turned her head to look at him. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or angry or resigned. Maybe all three. “If you don’t want to do this, Rosalie, it’s fine. I have to go, but you can stay here. No one will bother you.”
“I’m not going to stay here,” she said. “I’m okay.” She took a deep breath. “I really am.”
